For The Beauty Of The Earth / This Is My Father's World

Selah opens with Folliott Pierpoint's short hymn of thanks — "for the beauty of the earth, for the glory of the skies, for the love which from our birth over and around us lies" — before moving into Maltbie Babcock's longer meditation on the same subject from a different angle.

"This is my Father's world, I rest me in the thought, of rocks and trees, of skies and seas, His hand the wonders wrought" turns ownership into comfort rather than just fact. The world belongs to someone specific, which changes how it's meant to be noticed.

The psalmist's declaration that the earth and everything in it belongs to the Lord, and the heavens themselves declaring God's glory, both sit behind the medley's confident claim on creation. The final verses turn from nature to hope in a harder register — "though the wrong seems oft so strong... the battle is not done, Jesus who died shall be satisfied, and earth and heaven be one" — refusing to let admiration for creation ignore the fact that it's still, for now, a battlefield.